31 January 2016 1:12 AM

The biggest scandals go on for years because they are so huge that nobody notices them. We stand and watch outrageous things going on, thinking that everything is all right because nobody else is making a fuss.

The new film about the 2008 bank collapse, The Big Short, makes this point perfectly. Anyone who wanted to could see the great lending boom was based on garbage, worthless loans that would never be repaid.

But most people didn’t want to. And even now we shy away from the blatant truth. The film’s makers, realising how easily our attention wanders, hired the Australian actress Margot Robbie to sit in a bathtub, naked except for a few thousand symbolic bubbles, to explain sub-prime mortgages in simple (and very crude) English.

The Big Short’s makers, realising how easily our attention wanders, hired the Australian actress Margot Robbie to sit in a bathtub, naked except for a few thousand symbolic bubbles, to explain sub-prime mortgages in simple (and very crude) English

How I wish I could afford to hire her to explain the equally shocking truth about the vast ‘antidepressant’ scandal that goes on all around us.

But, just as banks and investors were willing – if blinkered – accomplices in the mad folly that ripped the West’s economy to bits eight years ago, many doctors and decent men and women are complicit in the Great Happy Pills Delusion.

Doctors can get plenty of rewards from drug companies for promoting their pills. Invitations to conferences at five-star hotels, with diving, golf and fishing laid on are not unknown. Others are paid to write apparently unbiased articles in medical journals praising a company’s drugs.

But even those who don’t accept this are often relieved to have something, anything, to prescribe to the dozens of unhappy patients who seek their help. If they and the patient believe these pills work, then, in a way, they will. So would inert pills made of chalk, as it happens.

If only Margot Robbie could be hired tp explain the equally shocking truth about the vast ‘antidepressant’ scandal that goes on all around us, in which many decent men and women are complicit

And so the patients, too, are recruited into the ‘antidepressants saved me from misery’ campaign. There’ll be some in every street and workplace, given that more than 53 million prescriptions for these drugs are dispensed in the UK to about four million people every year.

The trouble is that rigorous science, in which they are tested against sugar pills, increasingly doubts that they do work. And, worse still, there is worrying evidence that the side effects of some of these drugs may be very serious indeed.

Now, in the respected pages of the British Medical Journal, comes a stinging report, carefully analysing 70 trials of ‘antidepressants’, which found that some common drugs of this kind actually double the risk of suicide and aggressive behaviour in under-18s.

This, by the way, does not mean that adults are unaffected. The drug companies’ research repeatedly under-reported deaths and episodes of self-harm by tested patients.

A drug that does not really work is one thing. A drug whose users harm themselves (or others) is another.

The vast extent of this problem and the huge sums of NHS money spent on it may make media and politicians think it must be all right. But they thought the same about sub-prime mortgages. And it was not all right. Nor is this.

Our crazy war on savers

In Japan now they are starting to charge people for keeping healthy credit balances in the bank. It is called ‘negative interest’ and is part of a vicious war on savers under way all over the world. It’s pretty intensive here too. Those who voted Tory in 2010 to ‘get Gordon Brown out’ might ponder George Osborne’s relentless Brown-style raids on private pension funds, punishing and robbing dedicated savers with extra taxes, to subsidise Google’s tax breaks.

The same goes for ‘quantitative easing’, designed to push small investors into putting their cash into risky places to get any return at all. Those who refuse have their interest-free bank balances slowly drained by inflation (which is supposed to have disappeared, but hasn’t). How long before there’s ‘negative interest’ too? Destroying the savings and hopes of the middle classes is what, in the end, led to Germany’s gruesome descent into fanatical madness in the 1930s.

It helped put Vladimir Putin in power in Moscow. It is deeply irresponsible politics as well as deeply irresponsible economics.

I think I could just about bear it, even so, if people didn’t keep telling me what a great and righteous Chancellor George Osborne is. It is, once again, a lie so huge that they get away with it.

So now all of us must live in the knowledge that a double murderer, with severe psychiatric problems, is living secretly among us. I defy anyone to say with total assurance that it is safe to let him out. His crime is said to have been horrific. But he has been released into the ‘community’. He is in his 40s, but we cannot know his new name, or his old one, or where he is or what he does.

This is thanks to our ‘Supreme Court’ (the name is itself a lie, for it is not supreme at all, but subject to Parliament and also the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg).

These exalted personages overruled four wiser judges, and common sense. If they have made a terrible mistake, how will they be made to pay for it?

Last week I finally underwent root canal dentistry, the lurking ill-defined horror that lies in wait for the middle-aged. Well, I am here to report that it was nothing like as bad as most of the things I have heard it compared to. And it was far less gruelling, protracted and demoralising than trying to extract an apology for wrongdoing from the BBC, or a Left-wing newspaper, or from a railway company – all activities I have been engaged in during the past few weeks.

Not all Gas and Gaiters

The Archbishop of Canterbury has had a nasty surprise. It follows the Church of England’s decision to publicise, in national media, an unproven claim of child abuse against the long-dead Bishop George Bell, one of the C of E’s few genuinely great men.

Now Justin Welby has had a stonking letter from Bishop Bell’s niece, Barbara Whitley, telling him off. Mrs Whitley,91 and with a mind as sharp as a guillotine, wrote to the Prelate: ‘My uncle was an extremely holy, private man. A deep thinker with many engagements and a loving, helpful wife. I am convinced he would not have done any such thing’.

This must have come as something of a surprise, since the C of E’s bureaucrats had assumed George Bell had no living relatives.

You would have thought Mrs Whitley, herself the daughter of a Bishop, deserved a swift and personal reply. But Archbishop Welby passed the matter to a subordinate. Mrs Whitley has written to him again, protesting that her Uncle’s name is being smeared. I do hope he writes back himself, this time.

If you want to comment on Peter Hitchens, click on Comments and scroll dow

They ask some factory worker "do you trust David Cameron", he replies "yes I trust him to do the best for us bla bla bla". Its like something out of the Soviet Union. Even the Netherlands have an option to put a break on migrant benefits, they tried to enforce it 13 times and were overruled.

I don't understand these people I see on TV. Cameron goes to a factory and all the employees are sycophantic and trust him and he gets to spout a loud of propaganda without anyone heckling him? What is going on? Ok, I haven't had a job like that for 20 years (I work at home), but I couldn't help wonder why no one shouts out what a traitor he is even if that means they are sacked. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to get on as the top story on the BBC News. What has happened to everyone? No ohe has any fire in their belly anymore? What we are witnessing is monumental treachery!

Mr. Hitchens
On "happy pills", Fred Solano questioned whether you have complied with the requisite standards. He might have a point. It would help if you responded. He also questioned your motives. I think his insinuation about column inches wrong. Your response, however, is not entirely satisfactory. Your only motive, you say, is "to tell the truth" about what you consider "one of the major scandals of the age". I think you are without question to be believed when you say this. However, it sounds a bit noble and a bit faux naif. If you are in good faith, telling the truth is just the bare minimum. There is an infinite number of truths you could tell. They have to be told to good purpose. And they have to be fit for purpose. When confronted or criticised, you tend to claim that you are "just a humble scribbler". This sets limits on what you can justify saying. It does not absolve you from the basic requirements of sound argument and sufficient evidence. I would suggest that you are fully entitled to publicise your concern that there is a scandal to do with the prescribing of anti-depressants - but no more. Only those qualified can judge if you are right. But you have a habit of going beyond what you can properly assert. For example, you talk about "happy pills", which indicates a fundamental ignorance or carelessness. Again, you insist that there is no such thing as addiction, despite your lack of knowledge about how the brains works. You have absolutely no grounds for asserting anything about the physical basis of addiction. This over-confidence in your ability to cut through to the truth based on a cursory reading of a few articles and the odd book leads you to close your mind. You have decided that climate change is a myth. You therefore absolutely refuse to study the science on which the opposite conclusion is based. This is not rational. Indeed, your opinions on religion prompt the question how seriously you take rationality. You say that reason cannot demonstrate the existence of God, nevertheless you "choose" to believe. You are free to be as irrational as you wish. However, to return to Fred Solano's reasonable expression of concern, as a humble scribbler you have a duty that goes beyond your own preferences about whether or not to be bound by the rules of rationality. Your opinions have some small influence on the public on matters of life and death. Your refusal to be rational risks causing some small amount of harm (or in the case of climate change, contributing a small amount to an immense heap of harm). I think Mr. Solano deserves a response.

The whole Cameron event is a non-event. No one cares about migrant benefits

>
Cameron is a like a left wing teenager who has ZERO understanding of the things which actually matter to the political Right, or even those with a sense of ENGLISH history. He is a complete joke, how on earth did the Conservative Party ever get him?

There has been little more humiliating in my entire life than Cameron's negotiations.

Paul P.
I'm a bit slow sometimes. - I've been told the figures are published by the ONS.

Real wage growth in the 1970s - 2.9 per cent, in the 1980s - 2.9 per cent, 1990s - 1.6 per cent, 2000s - 1.2 per cent, and obviously in the Great Recession they've fallen. It's notable (surprising) that the 1970s were as good as the 1980s.

On income distribution, I'd have to go digging for the figures. But there does not seem to have been a big shift in income from the middle to the lower classes in the 1980s, as you suggested. There has, I believe, been a big shift starting in the 1980s to the top 10 per cent from all the rest of us.

Perhaps it in part reflects the hollowing out of manufacturing that began in the 1980s, and the Big Bang in 1986, which was the beginning of the banksterism that reached full flower in the last few years. There was also a spectacular debt-fueled boom and bust in the 1980s. The boom in the 2000s was relatively small. The bust, like the whole cycle in the 1980s, was caused, or at least made a great deal worse, by policy errors.

So I'm not sure that the distinction between the 1980s and subsequent decades is clear-cut.

The steady decline in real wages may well reflect (if my hazy memory of basic textbooks is at all accurate) a steady decline in productivity, which will result in slower trend growth in the economy.

As you say, if that is so, debt can only postpone the reckoning and make the adjustment to reality the more painful. I suppose I'd have to be competent to analyse the balance sheets of each sector of the economy to be able to say whether debt overall is excessive or not. Do you have the competence? I know I don't.

I think there has been a shift in society for a while to expect a pill will cure everything.
That life must be perfect, marriage must be perfect, that looks must be perfect, the young's life on Facebook must be portrayed as perfect. If they don't have 300,"friends" there is angst.
You can only be happy if you have the right Branded thing, the newest phone.
If you suffer a loss, you want the grieving process hurried up.

I'm not belittling severe mental illness, my birth mum was diagnosed with puerperal psychosis, severe post natal depression and later manic depression.
I've learnt a lot about what led to that and after and can see what life circumstances affected her deeply and that tody proper treatment may have meant she could have kept her business and with childcare help had a different outcome.
I think there are a lot of pressures on the young and in general that if you don't fit a certain ideal, then something must be wrong.
There is a lot of anxiety, that wasn't there when I was younger. It is fed from telly and I notice in women's magazine, so many articles on different women that look perfect all the time have manged perfect lives and perfect jobs and you too can achieve this.
You must be this type of woman and if you aren't then society doesn't appreciate this anymore you have to want more.
A lot of this goes over my head and I don't take any notice, being from the generation I am,but I see the young feel they have to fit a stereotype and think they have to say have this size bust to be perfect.
When you want to say your body will change shape at all the different stages you go through as a woman.
Stop fretting, make the best of yourself, cover up the bits you don't like and find pleasure in the small things of life and keep a sense of perspective and a sense of humour.

"Did you really mean to equate the admittedly unlovely EU with Nazi Germany?"

A provocatively willful misunderstanding. I said fascistic totalitarian bureaucracy. The Second World War was fought to assert the principles of democracy over totalitarian dictarorship. The Naziness of the German enemy was incidental. The Italian government wasn't Nazi, nor was that of Imperial Japan.

The peacetime slide into fascistic government under the auspices of the EU while not yet totalitarian shows every indication of that being the goal - probably not in my lifetime, but that is the goal. It is Parkinsonian inevitability in every sense - the death of democracy by a thousand bureaucratic cuts, and then some.

To paraphrase a well-known Burkean axiom, all that is necessary for the triumph of totalitarianism is for loss of interest in liberty to prevail.

Mrs B , you have me , as they say in Minder , bang to rights .
in my defence I must say that I am a big fan of women , I think they are the second best thing( and I do not mean men are the first) that was ever created .

The father who appeared on TV yesterday also spoke of other families in the area who are in the same position as his family had raised money, acquired land for a 14 bed mental health accommodation but permission hasn't been granted.
Considering the government are supposed to be taking mental health more seriously it doesn't make sense to me.

It's like the closure of mental hospitals, two in my county, with large grounds making way for housing, they could have been brought up to date and provide a lot of supported housing.
The same as the open air schools we used to have. For young children, some downs syndrome, some just a bit backward as we used to say. Some you couldn't put a label on and for those like me who had missed school barbecue of an illness, for well over a year, before rejoining Primary education.
There are many children who could do with being put back a year or who are slow at learning.
Instead they put pressure on them or (label) while not streaming or expecting them to be in a normal class.
What is in some case seen as naughtiness, is because they aren't up to the work, for whatever reason.
You can't expect a 14 year old who is finally given a test and the results are a learning age of 9 when they are in a referral unit.
When education ages are rigid and there is no facility to put them back to catch up, they have to leave. Even though now the age goes to 18.

'The Second World War, it might credibly be said, was all for nothing. Europe is sliding towards a fascistic totalitarian bureaucracy'. For one who prides himself on his rational approach to the great issues of the day, you appear to have completely lost the plot. Did you really mean to equate the admittedly unlovely EU with Nazi Germany?

No I'm sure you weren't looking at her eyebrows! I was also wondering if the bath water had gone cold, to get that shot!
I think cellulite is more of a problem for women than it is for men...I think your post proves that, they are too busy looking elsewhere!!

"I see Cameron is still trying to pull the wool over our eyes with this so-called watered down ‘emergency brake’ on in-work benefits"

The whole Cameron event is a non-event. No one cares about migrant benefits or takes any notice of the claimed effect it would have on immigration. Migrants come here to better their condition through hard work, as did the Poles and other Eastern Europeans. No one can fault this ambition, but there is a limit to numbers rushing all at once even in the case of hard workers. And of course the British don't want their culture massively diluted by massive all-at-once immigration, beneficial that it might be in the long run. Cameron's so-called reforms are blindsiding non-issues.

What British people want is the de-Europeanising of hallowed British culture, a culture given all its warts, quirks, eccentricities and idiosyncrasies. Europe is fine - in Europe. There are no problems with holidaying in Europe. What the British want is to make their own laws and control as far as it can be controlled their own destiny. Democracy and liberty are ideas the pro-EU lobby try to distract the British public from with talk only of prosperity, influence, the 'top table' and more 'clout'. Being subsumed beneath and overwhelmed by the superstate bureaucracy inevitable with political union is never broached.

The Second World War, it might credibly be said, was all for nothing. Europe is sliding towards a fascistic totalitarian bureaucracy without a shot being fired or a bomb dropped. It's taking us with it and there looks to be nothing we can do about it. Our own prime minister is on their side.

Mrs B , Her eyebrows , no I had not noticed that , it just shows how the male & female mind work , so alike yet so different .
Another example , a picture of Pamela Anderson at the height of her fame was shown in a newspaper , the picture showed Miss Anderson from the rear , bending over from the waist rummaging in Her sportsbag , at breaktime three of my female co-workers were inspecting the photo in depth , hmm , I thought , this may be interesting , then the result of their inspection was announced " see , I told you she had cellulite" . collapse of all except those 3 , in the canteen in fits of laughter .

"Both of the Columbine High School shooters in Colorado were taking antidepressant drugs."

You can't endlessly trawl the human condition for examples that fit your fault preferences. For your above observation to have any probabilistic weight all mass murders or a significantly high proportion of them would have to be the result of taking antidepressants. Have all mass murderers been tested for antidepressants? It is not enough that *some* mass murders might be the result of taking antidepressants. It has to be statistically significant.

Tuchman's Law is evident in promoting this theme. Tuchman's Law states that if a given event becomes newsworthy, in this case the taking of antidepressants by a high-profile mass murderer, the public mind assumes that the correlation is widespread and even universal. Then some activist group gets hold of the issue and we find that, as famously with white asbestos, an entire industry employing hundreds of thousands is needlessly destroyed.

Talking about mental health. Did anyone see the slot on Victoria Derbyshire yesterday, BBC morning about the lack of mental health provision for young people.
A parent telling how they had to make a three and a half hour trip to see their daughter, because there were none locally.
It seems she had been sent to several different parts some further away than Wales, where she is now, i believe they come from Cornwall.
Initially when she hit puberty and had problems, she ended up in a police station kitchen. with a blanket, because there were no suitable places and it was I presume better than a cell.
I know that it is hard to get mental health help for a young person and once past 18 family and relatives are not allowed information.
In speaking to a mental health practitioner, on the young and problems of being sent away from family on the advice of social workers,I was told that many areas are having the same problems that vulnerable young are coming up against.
In many cases, their problems are too much for proper supported housing and they end up just having rooms and are expected to suddenly cope and all their behavioural problems suddenly don't count.
If they don't turn up for appointments, because of such problems, then that's it.

On medication of young. I have seen a young person put on a higher dose of ritalin and all the character and personality go.
Dark under eyes, headaches and underweight.
This was stopped. Yes there were problems and looking after them was very hard work, but pills weren't going to sort out the issues.
There was a difference to other children I have looked after, but there were also other factors.
it was easier for them to label and pass them round many schools and pupil referral unit.

"In the US, average real wages have been broadly flat, I think, since the 1980s. Is it the same in the UK?"

Real wages in the UK have been broadly flat or dropping for the past decade. This after a steady rise since the 1980s. Misuse of credit, a facilitator of prosperity when used appropriately, has hidden the drop from view. Debt-fueled growth followed by mini-crashes now seems to be the Western economic cycle of inevitability.

As manufacturing increasingly moved to points east over the last 20 years an illusion of prosperity has been sustained in the West through debt, now at all-time highs, both personal and government. I don't think any of it can ever be paid back, and we are technically bankrupt. The underlying trend has been a drop in wages, beneficial only in attracting some of the manufacturing back, which has been accomplished to some extent but only in the form of cheap-labour assembly.

The UK has some high value services in great demand in the world market, but we can't all be employed in providing them. The income they earn is not handed out to those formerly employed in manufacturing. Thus a large wealth disparity is emerging which during the 1980s and shortly thereafter began to close, but since the export of our manufacturing to the East has opened up again. We are in that wage-doldrum period while we wait for Chinese disposable incomes to rise enough to make our labour look cheap and Chinese investment in it to to begin.

At the present 'Made in China' is going head to head with 'Made in Germany', China having vanquished 'Made in England' a long time ago. There is a smidgen of 'Made in France' hanging about, but only because it is heavily subsidised by the French government. 'Made in Everywhere-else-European' is pretty much done for. In a sense, then, it will be better for Britain to stay hugging the European Union where there may be a few years left basking in what's left of Germany's manufacturing glory and economic farsightedness. We have none as such.

No quite. Very eloquent, but the female in me couldn't help noticing one of her eyebrows doesn't match the other. Devil of a job to get them equal with plucking!!

Roisin
After reading your post about a shirtless shot..it made me think of the full frontal in War and Peace the other night! Shirtless is much better than full frontal, it was enough to put you off supper.
I read that Aiden Turner is going to have less grooming and go au natural. Either way I don't mind.
In that vein, looking at the picture of our host, I think I can see him in tricorn hat, frock coat, breeches and boots, riding on a windswept Cornwall beach!!

On root canals. I chose not to have one. I have to be careful at the dentist with extractions or root canal and take antibiotic cover.
Years ago I had my wisdom teeth out at my dentists, but they are all terrified now of some reaction to penicillin, although I've had it since about 6 years of age, so I have to go to another town where they have a special medical room.
Thanks to a an over zealous hygienist, I got an infection in a back tooth with an already deep filling. I chose extraction, rather than have the worry of it in the future, even though they tried to persuade me otherwise.
I have a small unobtrusive denture,no worry and because we installed a wood burner, saved on the heating so it was enough to get my husband some newer front dentures and mine on NHS.
I'm sure Anonymous would approve.

It turns out the pharmaceutical companies that produce antidepressant drugs are publishing the results of only positive clinical trial data in medical journals while suppressing all the negative data. In cases where negative clinical study data is published, the negative parts are being rewritten to appear positive or simply being omitted altogether.

This outrageous practice has major implications. Since doctors rely primarily on this published medical journal data they are getting a skewed view of the effectiveness and safety of antidepressant drugs.

Both of the Columbine High School shooters in Colorado were taking antidepressant drugs. So was the lone gunman at Virginia Tech University who killed 32 students. And more recently, so was the young killer in the mall in Omaha, Nebraska. ANH-USA has researched dozens of the most high-profile cases of violent crimes over the last few decades. They found that in just under half of the cases (eleven out of twenty-three), the perpetrator was documented to be taking, or had recently stopped taking, some form of antidepressant or antipsychotic medication.

In another seven cases, the killer had been on these medications earlier. We suspect that number is even higher, but the information is either not publicly available or not known.

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